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Working Moms
kristinyoung111
member
Baby now refusing to sleep until I come home, help
kristinyoung111
member
in Working Moms
My LO was pretty good about sleeping for DH and going to sleep before I came home at 10:30pm, but in the past month, she has been refusing to sleep until I get home. She is five months but is exhibiting signs of colic (never had these before the past month). At about 6:30 or 7, Im guessing when she wants to go to sleep for the night, she starts getting fussy and cannot be consoled. It has gone from inconsolable fussiness to full on screaming for hours until she exhausts herself. DH has tried everything (shushing, swing, skin to skin, pacifier, etc.). Sometimes things work for 10 minutes and or work one night and then don't the next. She has also started reverse cycling and doesn't want to eat much until I am home. I cannot change my schedule until January, and there's no guarantee I can get a shift where I can come home at 6. I am not sure what else to do. It just keeps getting worse, not better. On top of it all, I think she may be teething but I can't be sure.
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Re: Baby now refusing to sleep until I come home, help
My DH just said she has been calling for me too. >.<
What are her daytime naps like? She should be getting 14 - 16 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. My guess is that he's missing her sleep window and not getting her down in time.
I don't understand how she's calling for you either.
Reverse cycling is difficult, but normal for working mamas. My 10 month old is still up 2- 3 times/night. Luckily she now goes back down easily after 15 minutes of feeding/snuggling with me.
For us, sleep started getting generally very difficult around 5 months. We did some gentle sleep training at 6.5 months. In my opinion, you have to just do what you can at this point - strong, consistent bedtime routine, sleep-conducive environment (dark, cool room, warmly dressed, loud rumbly white noise) and if it's still going on in a month or so, look at some sleep training.
That said, I'd bet money on the idea that she's not getting enough total sleep and that your DH isn't trying tog et her to sleep early enough.
Good luck!
Question about putting her down early, like at 6:30...I've done this before myself when I'm home and it seems like she will do more of a nap than actually going to bed. She will be up again in two hours, maybe less. Usually I can get her to go back to sleep fairly quick. Is that normal?
OK. You should develop a good bedtime routine. An example would be:
- strip clothes
- infant massage
- diaper
- PJs
- turn on white noise
- read a book
- prayer or lullaby
-lights out
- nurse/bottle
If you want to stop the nurse-sleep association (which is your decision - neither right nor wrong) then put it earlier in teh routine. This routine should be done the.exact.same.way.every.night. Like a record on repeat.
As for naps, if she's only sleepign for 45 minutes at a time, she's completely one sleep cycle and then waking up. My LO did this until we did some gentle sleep training and 6.5 months. This meant, however, that in order to get the total amount of sleep needed, she woudl takea nap every 60 - 90 minutes. So, the days looked like this: wake, 60 minutes later: nap, wake 45 minutes later; 90 minutes later: nap, wake 45 minutes later, repeat. Bedtime for most babies that age will be between 6:30 and 7:30. 8 at the very latest. And yes, it's normal for her to treat it like a nap, but you shoudl try to get her back down quickly (as you do - but your DH should do the same thing).
Eventually she'll figure it out on her own or, when she's a little older, you can do some sleep training (there are lots of options besides CIO if you don't like that).
Hang in there. I know it's hard.
ETA: sorry for typos; in a rush.